<p>I am considering applying to Santa Clara, but I was worried when I saw that they are on the "hall of shame" list for not giving out good financial aid. If they don't give out much need-based aid, then I probably would get very little to none. On their website, I saw that SCU has a lot of merit based scholarships, but they weren't very specific. I have a 34 ACT and 3.99 UW GPA, could anyone estimate about how much merit aid I would be likely to get? Or have stories about what they were offered? Thanks</p>
<p>2290 SAT, 3.9 UW, applied EA
I got a half-tuition scholarship, and am a semifinalist for the full tuition+room and board johnson scholarship</p>
<p>From East coast and not christian, don’t know if that makes any difference</p>
<p>Thank you! Did you have incredible ECs or anything like that?</p>
<p>A few solid ecs but othing extraordinary. I think my Santa Clara supplemental essay was very good.</p>
<p>D also got the half-tution scholarship (Provost). 34 ACT, 4.0 unweighted, 9APs by the end of the year. Very strong ECs, including service.</p>
<p>Ok thank you, that is good to hear.</p>
<p>GPA: 4.2
SAT: 2050
National Hispanic Scholar</p>
<p>All AP and honors curriculum </p>
<p>Attended Jesuit High School</p>
<p>Many EC and extensive community service</p>
<p>Received half-tuition (provost) scholarship, 19,300 per year in SCU incentive grant, semi-finalist in Johnson’s scholar</p>
<p>I live in SoCal-- 4.0/4.15 GPA, 2390 SAT, will have taken six APs by graduation. Good but not particularly outstanding or numerous ECs (awards in competitive speech, ~400 hours volunteer work through my church, a few miscellaneous clubs). Common App essay was very good, SCU supplement was decent.</p>
<p>I received the provost scholarship as well, as did several of my friends. Most had lower test scores but a more impressive EC resume than mine. I believe you would most likely receive the half-tuition as well.</p>
<p>Be warned, SCU’s cost of attendance is quite high. Even with the half-tuition scholarship, the total cost is still around $38k/year. Because of that price tag, I will probably not be able to attend.</p>
<p>Accepted at SCU with $4.5K in aid which includes loans. SCU was my first choice but they are awful when it comes to aid. All other schools that I was accepted at (2 Jesuit) were in the $15K to $25K range. Also when we ran the net price calculator before applying the indicator was approx. $23K. I can understand how all this changes but from an estimate of $23K to $4.5K that is shameful. This is really misleading SCU should reimburse the application fee let alone the time spent to submit. Spoke to FinAid office to determine whether there was a mistake and absolutely no latitude. Truely decpetive and concerned about SCU’s core values.</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing. I decided not to apply. I would’ve had to write the essays in one day, and I’m already paying a lot in app fees, so I decided it wasn’t worth it.</p>
<p>I concur about SCU being lame on merit $. Seem to be a little random how they disburse merit scholarships, not always in line with stats. We got an email saying how “they have hard time matching merit scholarships to each student” blah, blah. Several kids I know received $0.</p>
<p>^SCU seems to give out half-tuition to students who have strong stats, but I agree that it is not a uniform or transparent process. It is what it is, and there are many schools that are comparable to SCU but have worse merit aid.</p>
<p>I’ve pointed out the fact before that SCU doesn’t actually post any qualification information on their university merit awards web page, most presumably to pick and choose when they want to apply that merit award to a student and when they don’t (i.e. using it to the university’s advantage and not the student’s even if a student has the same or better academic merits than another recipient). Most award amounts “vary” according to each individual detail (besides the NMF since that’s a national award). The Johnson Scholars Award is the only one to actually posts qualifications (3.8 GPA), but that’s just to be considered for the award and all applicants go through an SCU internal selection process.</p>
<p>[Santa</a> Clara University - Financial AidSCU Awards](<a href=“http://scu.edu/financialaid/SCU-Awards.cfm]Santa”>Financial Aid - Santa Clara University)
[Santa</a> Clara University - Office of the Provost -Selection Process](<a href=“http://scu.edu/provost/research/johnsonscholars/selection/]Santa”>http://scu.edu/provost/research/johnsonscholars/selection/)</p>
<p>I always reviewed their President’s Reports, which include a financial update on a consistent basis, but they oddly stopped posting those on their website last year (after doing it for over a decade). You’d think with an endowment approaching record levels, the university could spare a dime to the students in the form of FA. I guess they’d rather play the “My endowment is bigger than yours” game. The most recent report they actually let you view online (from 2011 - 2012) shows their biggest revenue is from tuition and fees (of course), but Financial Aid is a proportionally smaller expense. Only 23% of income from tuition and fees goes back out to students in the form of FA. I’ve looked it up before and other comparable schools DO offer more back in FA as a percentage.</p>
<p>One of te things that has always bothered me about SCU is that tuition is only ~$1500 less than Stanford, but I’ve never viewed SCU as a Stanford-minus-$1500 . . . more like a Stanford-minus-a-whole-lot-of-things-including-generosity. Besides, if Stanford knows the reason you’re not going to attend there once they’ve offered you admission is because you can’t afford it, then they figure out how you can afford it. I’ve never heard of SCU doing the same.</p>
<p>I agree, turtlerock. SCU was/has been the least transparent college I’ve applied to in terms of the merit aid process. I emailed the admissions office about merit scholarships, and they directed me to fill out the NPC (which is for financial aid and didn’t answer my question.) Not to mention that it took nearly 2 months for an email response… not a pleasant experience.</p>
<p>My S received a full tuition grant. He is now a sophomore. The grant was not indexed to tuition increases, so I guess it’s actually $40,000 per year. He came from a Jesuit high school, OOS, National Hispanic Scholar, solid ECs, honors and AP track. He loves SCU.</p>
<p>I suspect that SCU uses merit money to pick and choose students that it really wants to attend. Not that there is anything wrong with this approach (it turns out great for students like window’s S) but it makes the planning process difficult.</p>
<p>Many people in our area apply to SCU. Those who get half-tuition merit awards tend to have high stats and good ECs. Those who get full tuition merit awards tend to have very similar stats but either very unique ECs or URM status (mostly the latter). For students who match this description, SCU could be a fantastic option.</p>
<p>SCU absolutely uses merit money to persuade students to attend that might otherwise choose a different or more prestigious school. Isn’t that the purpose of merit aid? They don’t seem to use a GPA/SAT formula for determining the amount of the scholarship as some schools do. Students offered presidential scholarships tend to be leaders with excellent academic records (the types of students offered admission by the Ivies or Stanford.)</p>
<p>I’m not convinced that these students are “mostly URMs”…</p>
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Right, merit aid should be awarded to a student based on his or her academic merits. The problem being pointed out is that SCU seems to “pick and choose” who they offer these awards to regardless of academic merit. A very simple example of what is being talked about it say student A and student B can be so equally matched academically (both with 4.0s, tons of APs, active leadership involvement, etc), but A gets a full- or half-tuition merit awards while B receives what relatively seems like loose change of a couple thousand. Again, SCU doesn’t publish the merit awards’ formulas like, and as you agree, others schools do. This leads me to suspect, like some others, that SCU isn’t actually basing merit awards off of a students merit, but basing merit awards on other factors as well. As an extreme example, (student A and B again) student A is not a URM and student B is - a factor that most likely neither student had control over - and student A and B recieved different “merit” awards despite the fact that the students have equal merits on paper. And yes, I’m also sure that SCU is giving higher merit awards to those students that appear to be Stanford/Ivy applicants to entice them to choose SCU. But, again, is being a Stanford applicant considered an academic merit according to SCU? We’ll never know since they aren’t transparent enough to this regard.</p>
<p>Really, that’s not the most fair way to do it. If SCU wants to complete with Stanford for highly qualified applicants, then they should raise the merit award amounts for everyone, just like other schools do, and not just when they want to. I understand they don’t do this for the long-run because they might actually lose more money (read: they won’t be at a loss of money, just lose more money than they already are), but how many applicants do they actually lure from a Stanford acceptance? I imagine there are a few cases, but it would seem a much bigger pool of applicants essentially miss out on merit aid at SCU (that they would qualify for at other schools) because SCU is trying to grab the small handfull of applicants that would otherwise go to Stanford (or other highly ranked schools). Of course, this last part is mostly my opinion and for once I have no actual data to back these assumptions up, but you can imagine that information would be hard to gather anyway - the way SCU’s transparency goes it’s likely we’ll never get to know.</p>
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<p>This post seems to have two contradictory ideas. One is that most SCU applicants are not getting merit aid because it is going to those who are accepted at Stanford, and the other is that those accepted at Stanford don’t go to SCU (and thus don’t get any SCU merit money).</p>
<p>It seems to me that either SCU is successfully luring Stanford acceptees, or the merit money is going to those not accepted at Stanford.</p>
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<p>I understand what you’re saying. I’m not trying to say that SCU shouldn’t use merit to persuade students to come (that is the point of merit aid), but rather that their process of assigning merit seems unusually opaque. As a prospective student, it was very difficult for me to gauge how much merit money I was likely to get. While I knew some students with resumes similar to mine who had gotten full tuition scholarships, others had only gotten 5-10k/year.</p>
<p>This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the Dean’s Scholarship (everything below half-tuition) does not even have a specified amount. I’m not saying that SCU should automatically assign merit money based on stats, but many other schools post specific award amounts followed by “students who receive _______ Award usually have at least a ____ GPA and ____ SAT”.</p>